Charlyn Marie “Chan” Marshall ( SHAHN; born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress, and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall’s first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist.
Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States, and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, Dear Sir (1995) and Myra Lee (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, What Would the Community Think. Following this, she released the critically acclaimed Moon Pix (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and The Covers Record (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs.
After a brief hiatus she released You Are Free (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced The Greatest (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, Jukebox, was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced Sun, which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest charting album of her career to date.
Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power’s sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.